Carrot Soup from Graasland and Naan from Vegan Eats World

Can you believe tomorrow’s the last day of VeganMoFo already? I didn’t get to write (or read) as many posts as I would’ve liked for various reasons, but I still want to post as much as I can before October’s over! I’d intended to spend my afternoon and evening making all kinds of baked goods to freeze for later: pumpkin bagels, earl grey-scented bread rolls, cranberry muffins, maybe a loaf or two of bread… so many wonderful plans. Sadly, though, my beloved little oven decided to stop working just as I wanted to begin (noooo!), so I’ve been trying to think of other ways to satisfy my need for breads and sweet treats. So far I’ve come up with waffles, pancakes, crepes, flatbreads…

Speaking of flatbreads! Pictured above is some fresh cumin seed naan served with a bowl of curried carrot soup. The naan bread is a recipe from Terry Hope Romero’s new book Vegan Eats World, which I picked up last week when I attended her book launch & cooking demo in Amsterdam! The book is full of inspiring recipes but my boyfriend and I both love naan so this bread was a  great place to start. I’ve made other naan recipes before that were pretty similar to this one, but it worked really well and I’d really like to try some of the variations as well (coriander & garlic naan!). It’s the only thing I’ve made from the book so far but the other recipes sound very promising as well so I can’t wait to try more. We had the chance to try her olive seitan after the cooking demo and I liked that a lot, so I’m planning on making that as soon as possible.

To go with the bread, I made this roasted carrot soup from Gnoe’s blog Graasland. I love roasted carrots (how I miss my oven already…) but I hadn’t tried them in a soup yet, so this was a lovely recipe to try. I did make the small change of using an Indian curry paste rather than a Thai one, which really changes the whole flavour of the soup, but it went very well with the naan bread! Oh, and I had to estimate the amount of carrots I used as my kitchen scales decided to stop working, too. I need to take better care of my kitchen!

Has anyone else gotten Vegan Eats World yet? Have you tried any recipes? I’d love to hear recommendations! Gnoe also posted pictures of the samples we got to try at the demo – olive chickpea seitan with lemony cashew sauce and banana chocolate cheesecake with a speculoos biscuit crust. Amazing.

Pancakes from BitterSweet and Kumquat Poppy Seed Scones

I’m super sleepy right now, so here’s a quick post about the delicious breakfast & scones I made today!
I felt like having a nice leisurely weekend breakfast but I didn’t really want to make something elaborate just for myself when I had too many other things to do. I did have some blueberries I needed to use, though, so I was really happy to come across this Pancakes for One recipe on Hannah’s blog. Okay, most pancake recipes don’t really take very long to prepare, but I guess I just needed the reminder that sometimes it’s worth a little extra effort to make a meal a bit more special. In the end my boyfriend joined me for breakfast even though he didn’t have much time (who could say no to blueberry pancakes?) so I made a double batch of the recipe to share.

The following treat doesn’t technically fit in with my MoFo theme for this month as it’s not a recipe from a blog, but it is from one of Hannah’s cookbooks so I’m including it anyway:
Kumquat poppy seed scones! My parents came dropped by for a visit today and I wanted to make them something tasty they hadn’t tried before. I knew they love baked goods with poppy seeds and I’d just picked up some kumquats at the market, so these scones from Vegan Desserts were perfect! I hadn’t tried kumquats before but I knew I could rely on Hannah’s recipes to turn a new ingredient into an original and delicious treat.  I was a little worried these wouldn’t turn out as I had to replace the margarine with oil, but I don’t think it affected the texture too much (I froze the oil beforehand so it was solid – a trick I’d learned from Vegan Pie in the Sky) and these scones were absolutely lovely.

I hope everyone’s enjoying MoFo 2012 so far. The first week’s gone by so quickly!

Grilled yuca tortillas, baked falafel, and more summer meals

For years I always skipped over the recipe for Grilled Yuca Tortillas in Veganomicon because I had never heard of yuca and I was sure that whatever it was, I had certainly never seen one at my local supermarket. This changed when I moved and started shopping at more different shops and markets, and sure enough, I’ve encountered this vegetable at a few different places now – it’s usually sold under the name cassava here – and I decided to finally give the recipe a try. Once I had picked up a package of frozen yuca pieces at Amazing Oriental, the dish was actually very easy to assemble: just boil and mash the yuca, add some sautéed vegetables and other ingredients, spread the filling onto a tortilla and grill until browned and crispy. I added roasted red peppers and black olives to the filling, both of which paired wonderfully with the creamy garlicky filling and provided a pretty colour contrast as well.

Now that I’ve tried this vegetable, I’d really like to make more dishes that feature yuca – I’d love to hear recipe recommendations if anyone has them!

These are a few other meals I’ve cooked this summer (I never got around to posting them so I figured I’d add them all to one post):

Pictured above is the baked falafel from Appetite for Reduction served with flatbread, salad, garlic sauce, aubergine dip, and roasted red pepper spread. By the time I was done cooking, the meal was more about the sides than the falafel itself, which was fine by me – I love meals with loads of different salads and toppings. The bread is the 50/50 flatbread from The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet, which was very simple and perfect as a quick side dish. I made it in a few different sizes but the large crispy ones were my favourite.

This is a bowl of the quinoa & black bean salad with toasted cumin seeds (also a recipe from AFR) that I made to keep in the fridge for quick healthy lunches. I did think it could use a few extra add-ins so I topped it with roasted red pepper slices here. This would be amazing with avocado on top, as well. The salad seems to be packed with nutritious things and it’s pretty filling so it would be great as a healthy meal on the go!

I had a big bag of red peppers to use up (I got 16 at the market for €1!), so after using some in the spread and on my salads I roasted a few of them to make this soup. It was simple (mostly just peppers blended with a little stock) but so full of flavour and colour.

Finally, I modified the broccoli quiche recipe from Vegan Brunch (which is also online here) to make these muffin-sized spinach tomato quiches. This dish is one of my favourites from the book because it’s so easy to adapt using whatever vegetables you have on hand. It’s also really good cold or at room temperature so this recipe is perfect for picnics, especially if you make it into mini quiches like I did! Just bake them in a muffin tin (you could probably even make them crustless, though I haven’t tried that) and reduce the cooking time a bit (mine were in the oven for about 20-25 minutes). I didn’t want to spend too much time making the crusts look perfect, but I kind of like the way they turned out – lots of crispy edges!

Hope everyone’s having a lovely weekend!